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Chinese Labor Law Reform: Guaranteeing Worker Rights in the Age of Globalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Earl Brown
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The New York Times on October 12, 2006 featured an article describing fierce opposition by some US investors and employers in China to modest improvements to Chinese labor legislation. I have just visited China with labor lawyers and industrial relations experts who have worked to advance these proposed changes in China's employment law. The labor law reformers paint a vivid picture of the imbalance to the detriment of workers in Chinese industrial relations and the resulting abuses of employees, and of the urgent need to redress this imbalance if China's social and investment environment is to remain stable.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 4 , Issue 11 , November 2006 , e20
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2006

References

[1] A recent ILO study shows that 50% to 80% of employers in Guangdong cities illegally retain wages. This practice is so prevalent it is justified as “local custom.” Greenfield and Pringle, “The Challenge of Wage Arrears in China” in Valesco (ed), Paying Attention to Wages (2002). According to one ACFTU survey, only 15.8% of private enterprises comply with working hour regulations. Most workers, according to this study, work a 50-hour week. See.

[2] American Chamber of Commerce, People's Republic of China, “Comments on Draft Labor Contract Law submitted to the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, Law Committee, Financial and Economic Affairs Committee, Legislative Affairs Commission,” April 19, 2006 (on file with author).

[3] In this respect, Chinese courts show the same “spirit of mutilating narrowness” in construing worker rights that Justice Felix Frankfurter discerned and condemned in US courts. See, e.g., U.S. v. Hutcheson, 312 US 219, (1941).